Category Archives: Imperialism

Syrians Have Every Right To Attack US Occupiers: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 25, 2023 | 1 comment

So-called terrorists defend their home country and attack an occupying power. And violence waged by the occupying power isn’t terrorism, it’s noble and just. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

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The western world is solemnly commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion by blindly following the US into more conflict and militarism while repeating all the same kinds of mass media malpractice.

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If you think it’s a coincidence that the western world suddenly got super–duper interested in China’s human rights record right when China began threatening US planetary domination, then you’re a bootlicking moron who deserves to be shamed in public.

A leaked 2017 State Department memo explicitly acknowledged that it’s US government policy to ignore the human rights violations of US-aligned nations while attacking them in nations like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Stop buying into this performance.

China has been sorting out China’s internal affairs for thousands of years; they don’t suddenly need help from a bunch of white stuffed shirts in Washington, London and Canberra just because a few sociopathic think tankers say so. Leave China’s issues to the Chinese to address.

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People who live in the Middle East have every right to attack the occupying forces there whose presence they oppose, and those occupying forces do not have any legitimate right to retaliate.

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Daniel Ellsberg Calling on Us to Stop Nuclear War, by Marjorie Cohn

Posted on March 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

A man who’s done what Daniel Ellsberg has done deserves our attention, especially since he’s apparently not going to be around much longer. From Marjorie Cohn at consortiumnews.com:

Daniel Ellsberg at a protest against the Iraq war in San Francisco, where he was arrested. (Steve Rhodes/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The legendary Daniel Ellsberg has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In a March 1 email to friends, Dan wrote, “I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live … it might be more, or less.” He will turn 92 on April 7.

Dan displayed uncommon courage in 1971 when he publicized the 7,000-page top-secret Pentagon Papers while working at the Rand Corporation. As a consultant to the Department of Defense, Dan drafted Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war.

In his book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Dan wrote that the Pentagon Papers exposed the “secrets five presidents had withheld and the lies they told” about U.S. decision-making in Vietnam. “This truth telling set in motion a train of events, including criminal White House efforts to silence or incapacitate me.” The government’s illegal efforts to silence Dan resulted in the dismissal of the charges against him and his codefendant Anthony Russo. “Much more important,” Dan noted, “these particular Oval Office crimes helped topple the president, an act that was crucial to ending the war.”

In 2014, Dan gave a keynote speech at the 45th reunion of the Stanford Anti-Vietnam War movement. At the reunion, he explained how the United States came dangerously close to using nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War. In 1965, the Joint Chiefs recommended to President Lyndon B. Johnson that U.S. forces hit targets up to the Chinese border. Dan thought their real aim was to provoke China into responding and then the U.S. would cross into China and demolish the communists with nuclear weapons.

Now, Dan is urging the world to again avoid nuclear annihilation.

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US Ambassador To China: “We’re The Leader” Of The Indo-Pacific, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

There are probably a few Asians that don’t cotton to the U.S. ambassador’s claim. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran.

Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns made the very interesting comment that Beijing must accept that the United States is “the leader” in the region and isn’t going anywhere.

“From my perspective sitting here in China looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or ten years ago,” Burns said, citing the strength of US alliances, its private sector and its research institutions and big tech companies.

“And I do think that the Chinese now understand that the United States is staying in this region — we’re the leader in this region in many ways,” Burns added emphatically.

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Washington Post Lets Hersh’s Dangerous Cat Out of the Bag, by Ray McGovern

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Seymour Hersh’s story was just too big to ignore. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Bombshell No. 1: Seymour Hersh’s Feb. 8 report that President Joe Biden authorized the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines built to carry cheap Russian gas to Europe.

Bombshell No. 2: The Washington Post today ended the Establishment media embargo on Hersh’s damning report, mentioning its findings and even including a link to his article.

The Post’s article by Karen DeYoung, no rogue reporter, bore the headline, “Russia, blaming US sabotage, calls for UN probe of Nord Stream.” DeYoung reported on the UN Security Council meeting yesterday at which Russia called for a special United Nations commission to investigate the explosions that blew up the Nord Stream undersea pipelines. DeYoung also noted that Professor Jeffrey Sachs and I gave short briefings at the beginning of the Security Council session.

Here’s an edited summary account by the UN of our testimony at the Security Council session:

SACHS: As the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022 constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to peace, it is the Council’s responsibility to take up the question of who might have carried out the act, help bring the perpetrator to justice, pursue compensation for the damaged parties and prevent such actions from recurring in the future. Countries need full confidence that their infrastructure will not be destroyed by third parties.

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Ukraine: The Tunnel at the End of the Light, by Robert Freeman

Posted on March 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

You almost have to post this one just for the title, but the article itself is excellent as well. From Robert Freeman at consortiumnews.com:

The U.S. abused its providential anointment as the exceptional nation, writes Robert Freeman. That abuse has been recognized, called out and is now being acted against by most of the other nations of the world.  

Jan. 16, 2017: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveling to Kiev. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv, Flickr)

“Light at the end of the tunnel” was an iconic phrase used by the warmongers who kept the U.S. in Vietnam long after the War had been lost.

The implication was that insiders could see through the fog of war and know that things were getting better. It was a lie.

In January 1966, long before the military height of the war, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told President Lyndon Johnson that the U.S. had a one-out-of-three chance of winning on the battlefield.

But Johnson, like Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, and Nixon after him, didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war. So, he ginned up a simplistic lie and “soldiered on.” 

The lie was blown by the Tet Offensive in January 1968. More than 100 U.S. military installations were attacked in a simultaneous nationwide assault that stunned the U.S.

The broadcaster, Walter Cronkite, then “the most trusted man in America,” bellowed on national television, “I thought we were supposed to be winning this damned thing.” It was the beginning of the end of the U.S.’ murderous and failed occupation. 

We’re now facing another light-and-tunnel event, this time in Ukraine. Only now, it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the tunnel at the end of the light. What do we mean by that? 

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The Antiwar Movement Roars Back to Life, by Ron Paul

Posted on February 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Of course the mainstream media ignored it, but there was a pretty substantial antiwar rally in Washington recently. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

On February 19th, the National Mall in Washington, DC saw its largest antiwar rally in 20 years. The speakers list included four former US presidential candidates and a broad and diverse collection of antiwar activists from beyond the left and right.

The aptly-named “Rage Against War Machine” rally drew thousands of attendees, however many pro-war advocates eagerly pointed out that it did not match in size some of the larger rallies against the Iraq war 20 years ago.

To that I say, “who cares”? The US mainstream media engages in war propaganda non-stop, with the only exception being Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. So I think it’s a miracle anyone had the courage to travel to the heart of the war machine in Washington, DC to make their voices heard! We don’t need a majority to fight back – an educated and dedicated minority will do quite nicely. And we certainly had that at the rally!

As I sat in the green room waiting to speak, I had the opportunity to visit with former Democrat presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich and former Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Political commentators Jimmy Dore and Chris Hedges were there, along with many leading and well—spoken libertarians. Everyone backstage carried the same message: we must put aside our differences to build a new, broad coalition against this war!

I believe the antiwar movement is starting to catch fire both at home and overseas. The DC rally was followed by much larger antiwar rallies in Paris, Berlin, London, and elsewhere.

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A Fantasy of Angelic, US Omnipotence, by Bruce Fein

Posted on February 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

Ah, to be a citizen of the only perfect nation on the planet, the only perfect nation in history. From Bruce Fein at consortiumnews.com:

Bruce Fein says Robert Kagan is convinced the U.S. has yet to metamorphose the world into paradise because of insufficient appreciation of its omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence, as outlined in Kagan’s 2006 neocon book Dangerous Nation.

U.S. personification Columbia in a World War I patriotic poster. (Paul Stahr, Herbert Hoover Library, National Archives and Records Administration, Public domain)

If you love fairy tales with happy endings, you’ll swoon over Robert Kagan’s Dangerous Nation’s fictional portrayal of America’s foreign policy from its earliest days to the dawn of the 20th century as a chivalrous aspiration or quest to bring Camelot to every corner of the globe.

The narrative veers from truth like the geocentric theory of the universe veers from the heliocentric.

According to Kagan, the gravitational pull of America’s foreign policy has always been a selfless giving and risking that last full measure of devotion to bring foreigners enlightened self-government and prosperity.  

The author posits that Americans uniquely enjoy angelic DNA.  They weep like Niobe upon witnessing foreigners groaning under oppression and eagerly champion American military intervention, i.e., the legalization of first-degree murder, to alleviate or end their misery.

Cervantes’ Don Quixote is put to shame.  Americans, Kagan insinuates will go straight to heaven without the need of an interview with God!

The fabulist nature of Kagan’s story is underscored by the heartlessness Americans were displaying at home over lynchings, white male supremacy, subjugation of Native Americans and rampant racism while purportedly acting like fairy godmothers abroad up to 1900. 

The tale is as implausible as if the anti-Christ in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Simon Legree, volunteered to fight to emancipate slaves in Cuba or Brazil.

Kagan is convinced that the United States has yet to metamorphose the world into paradise because of insufficient appreciation of its omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence in exhibiting every noble instinct of the human heart. (Was someone asleep at the switch in composing the book title conveying the opposite impression?)

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Dictators Bent on Building Military Empires: The Cost of the Nation’s Endless Wars, by John and Nisha Whitehead

Posted on February 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

The costs are incalculable and they are burying the U.S. in debt. And those are just the monetary costs. How do you put a price tag on a nation losing its soul? From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“Autocrats only understand one word: no, no, no. No you will not take my country, no you will not take my freedom, no you will not take my future… A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free.”—President Biden

Oh, the hypocrisy.

To hear President Biden talk about the Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, you might imagine that Putin is the only dictator bent on expanding his military empire through the use of occupation, aggression and oppression.

Yet the United States is no better, having spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.

What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.

War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine has already cost taxpayers more than $112 billion and shows no signs of abating.

Clearly, it’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world.

American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

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Implications of US Destruction of Nordstream 2 Pipeline, by Graham E. Fuller

Posted on February 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government’s desperate quest to maintain the U.S.-led unipolar world order will fail. From Graham E. Fuller at consortiumnews.com:

With a new Great Wall between Russia and the West, Graham E. Fuller wonders what kind of role lies ahead for either the U.S. or Europe on the international scene.

China’s embassy in Berlin, January 2010. (Jochen Teufel, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The disturbing and detailed reportage by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh on Washington’s sabotage of the Russian Nordstream 2 gas pipeline to Germany now provides new perspective on the momentous series of geopolitical trends that began with the war in Ukraine.

My own assessment of the Russian invasion written one year ago offered an analysis that was, and still is, markedly at variance with the Washington-dominated narrative of the course of Ukraine events.

A few thoughts from then:

—I condemned the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, and indeed of any government that launches a war (President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq included).

—My belief that the Russian invasion was nonetheless far from “unprovoked” but rather quite clearly provoked by Washington in its longstanding willful insistence on pushing NATO’s armed alliance ultimately right up to the very borders of Russia, where ancient Kievan/Russian cultural roots are deeply linked with early Russian/Orthodox Slavic civilization.

Yet Washington denies the validity of any Russian “sphere of influence” in Ukraine while the U.S. itself still maintains its own strong sphere of influence throughout Latin America — witness the Cuban missile crisis. (And can you imagine a Chinese military base in Mexico to bolster Mexican sovereignty?)

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War Certainly Is A Racket, by Iain Davis

Posted on February 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

There’s extensive financial skullduggery connected to the Ukraine-Russia war. Nothing’s changed since Smedley wrote his book. From Iain Davis at off-guardian.org:

In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler’s seminal book “War Is A Racket” warned of the dangers of the US military-industrial complex, more than 25 years before the outgoing US President Eisenhower implored the world to “guard against” the same thing.

One of the most decorated soldiers in US military history, Butler knew what he was talking about, famously writing that war is “…conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”

While he lamented the loss of his fallen comrades and despite the gongs he received for defending his country, Butler came to understand that he was actually a “high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers.” Later, the historian Antony C. Sutton proved that Butler was right.

When the US administration of George Bush passed its Foreign Operations Appropriation Law in 1991, it ended all US credit to the former, thriving socialist republic of Yugoslavia. At the time the perception on the Hill was that Yugoslavia was no longer required as a buffer zone between the NATO states and their former Warsaw Pact adversaries, so its independent socialism was no longer tolerated.

The US military industrial complex, that Butler and Eisenhower told everyone to tackle, effectively destabilised the entire Balkan region, destroyed hitherto relatively peaceful countries and then fuelled the resultant wars with its pet Islamist terrorists. Ably assisted by the World Bank and the IMF.

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